These two films are set in Los Angeles thirteen years apart, and is the focus of the Cinematic Forum. A short review will follow each screening, with a longer discussion on the second night. The two films are screened over two nights in the same week. A Community Screening & Open Discussion with no experts!

(#1 of 2): GRAND CANYON
(1991) US.
Director/Co-Writer: Lawrence Kasdan; Co-Writer: Meg Kasdan. (2 hr. 17 min.) 3 bones/4.
Unlike The Bonfire of the Vanities, this film is about possibilities, not fears! The dialogue in opening scene, and throughout the film, does not simply exist to push along the plot. It is the way we really think and talk in various situations. Honesty is all through this film, which is about several characters who would never, in the ordinary course of events, meet one another: a middle-class wealthy White accountant, his over-organized wife, their son about to leave the nest, a Black tow-truck driver, his sister, and her son, a Black single woman who works in the same office as the accountant, his White secretary, and his friend, a producer of violent films. This film is about the impulse to break down the barriers that society erects between people, and it takes place in a Los Angeles that is painted as ominous and threatening, an alienating landscape where rich people pile up bulwarks of money and distance to protect them from the dangers of poverty and despair. The film is not all about coincidences. Much of it is about daily life in a big US-American city. It is uncanny, the way the film tunes into the kinds of fears that are all around us in the cities -- even those we’re not always aware of. In a film that vibrates with an impending sense of danger, the single most terrifying scene is a driving lesson that a son gets with his father. The title of the film is not only a metaphor, but serves as a conversation about the wonders of the world and the insignificance of us humans.

(#2 of 2): CRASH
(2004) US.
Director/Co-Writer: Paul Haggis; Co-Writer: Bobby Moresco. (1 hr. 43 min.) 3 bones/4.
This film tells interlocking stories of Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Koreans, Iranians, cops and criminals, the rich and the poor, the powerful and powerless, all defined in one way or another by racism. All are victims of it, and all are guilty it. Sometimes, yes, they rise above it, although it is never that simple. Their negative impulses may be instinctive, their positive impulses may be dangerous, and who knows what the other person is thinking? The result is a film of intense fascination; we understand quickly enough who the characters are and what their lives are like, but we have no idea how they will behave, because so much depends on accident. Most films enact rituals; we know the form and watch for variations. This is a film with free will, and anything can happen. Because we care about the characters, the film is uncanny in its ability to rope us in and get us involved. Early in the film, we hear a Black police officer very gently, almost inaudible, “It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In LA, nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.” The director of this film, (whose screenplay for Million Dollar Baby led to Academy Awards), is a Canadian, who left a successful career in TV to direct this film, his first. It connects stories based on coincidence, serendipity, and luck, as the lives of the characters crash against one another other like pinballs. The film presumes that most people feel prejudice and resentment against members of other groups, and observes the consequences of those feelings. One thing that happens, again and again, is that peoples’ assumptions prevent them from seeing the actual person standing before them. An Iranian is thought to be an Arab, although Iranians are Persian. Both the Iranian and the White wife of the district attorney believe a Mexican-American locksmith is a gang member and a crook, but he is a family man. A Black cop is having an affair with his Latina partner, but never gets it straight which country she’s from. A White cop thinks a light-skinned Black woman is White. When a White producer tells a Black TV director that a Black character “doesn’t sound Black enough,” it never occurs to him that the director doesn’t “sound Black,” either. For that matter, neither do two young Black men, who dress and act like college students, but have a surprise for us. You see how it goes. Along the way, these people say exactly what they are thinking, without the filters of so-called “political correctness.” As Roger Ebert says, he makes this sound almost like episodic TV, “but Haggis writes with such directness and such a good ear for everyday speech that the characters seem real and plausible after only a few words. His cast is uniformly strong; the actors sidestep clichés and make their characters particular.” Ebert goes on to say that the film “finds a way of its own. It shows the way we all leap to conclusions based on race -- yes, all of us, of all races, and however fair-minded we may try to be -- and we pay a price for that. If there is hope in the story, it comes because as the characters crash into one another, they learn things, mostly about themselves. Almost all of them are still alive at the end, and are better people because of what has happened to them. Not happier, not calmer, not even wiser, but better. Then there are those few who kill or get killed; racism has tragedy built in. Not many films have the possibility of making their audiences better people. I don’t expect” this film “to work any miracles, but I believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves.” The film contains hurt, coldness, and cruelty, but is it without hope? Not at all. Stand back and consider. All of these people, superficially so different, share the city and learn that they share similar fears and hopes. Until several hundred years ago, most people everywhere on earth never saw anybody who didn’t look like them. They were not racist because, as far as they knew, there was only one race. One may have to look hard to see it, but this is a film about progress!

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